MARANA, Ariz. — Now that Tiger Woods has made his apologies and begun to mend his fences, the focus on the PGA Tour shifts to what he left unsaid in his carefully crafted and brilliantly delivered mea culpa on Friday: When will he return to competition?
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Matt Sullivan/Reuters
Tiger Woods has not returned to competition, but his presence was notable Friday in Arizona.
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Aside from the glib answers — “Whenever he wants” or “Whenever he is ready” — there is nothing concrete on which to base an answer. Not since the height of Kremlin tea-leaf reading in the 1960s has there been so much speculation based on so little information.
What better way to keep the focus on Woods while he makes his decision? For the majority of the players on the tour, the answer is some variation of “The sooner the better. Preferably yesterday.” For whatever their attitude toward the personal failings he admitted, they want him back.
Even golfers who are probably not on the Woods family Christmas card list, like Sergio García of Spain, recognize what he means to the overall success of the caviar circuit. García said all week that he was not interested in Woods’s struggles, and wanted to know one thing.
“I’m looking forward to seeing him back on tour and seeing him playing,” García said. “That’s what we love doing — watching the best player in the world play golf.”
To one degree or another, the response is typical of players who commented during the W.G.C.-Accenture Match Play Championship. Unfortunately, the best player in the world did not say when he would be back, fueling more speculation with the vague statement: “I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be. I don’t rule out that it will be this year.”
Woods’s absence through the first seven events has not been a huge problem for the tour, because he would have played just one tournament — the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego — before this. But a prolonged absence with an indefinite conclusion? Big problem.
The PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, alluded to this in his remarks Friday when he followed up his statement that “the PGA Tour has not been significantly impacted in a negative way” by Woods’s absence with a sobering statement of reality.
“He does generate a significant increase in the overall interest in the sport, no question, and he does increase significantly the number of people that watch on television,” Finchem said. “And that plays into our long-term relationships with our television partners and the value of television rights.”
One of those television partners, CBS, has a great deal at stake with its showcase telecast, the Masters, coming in the second week of April. Woods has much at stake as well. Once his rehab is over, his focus will return to his lifelong quest of surpassing the major championship total of 18 held by Jack Nicklaus since his final major win in 1986 at the Masters. Woods has won 14 majors.
Everything is predicated on when he concludes his rehab, but for Woods to skip the Masters would be, at the very least, surprising. His handlers sprinkled some photographic tea leaves on the water this week by releasing photos of him on the golf course, looking fit and very much at home, which he was, with the photos having been taken at Isleworth.
Does this mean he will do a low-key tuneup at the little intramural matches called the Tavistock Cup, which pits a group of tour pros from the very private Orlando enclave of Isleworth against a group from the equally tony enclave of Lake Nona? The stars would align nicely for that, with the dates falling on March 22 and 23, the Monday and Tuesday before the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Two home openers in the same week? What could be better?
There is always the possibility of opening earlier, at the W.G.C.-CA Championship at Doral Resort and Spa in Miami, which ends March 14 and would leave three tour events before the Masters, April 8-11. Woods has dominated the W.G.C.-CA Championship, as he has all the other W.G.C. tournaments, winning it six times.
It would be almost silly to speculate beyond the near term, but nine weeks after the Masters is the United States Open, played at Pebble Beach, where Woods beat the field by 15 strokes in 2000. If he were to miss that, it would be difficult to envision him being able to get his game ready for the British Open, three weeks later, at St. Andrews. The P.G.A. Championship is the week of Aug. 8-14 at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wis.
Whatever his decision, one thing is certain: the cameras, notebooks and microphones will be pointed in his direction. In that sense, he already is back.
